...by apparently a professional economics journalist whose understanding of how capitalism works is staggering.
What would happen if corporations acted on his advice? You'd be pouring money into both the firearms industry and the firearms market. What does that mean? New entrants to the market, of course. Smaller companies like Daniel Defense already exist, serving a niche market within the niche market that is modern sporting rifles. Since you'd be flooding the market with cash and then removing the major competitors, you'd open the floor for a whole new generation of arms makers -- not publicly traded firms but, like Daniel Defense, small businesses owned by people devoted to excellence in firearms production.
They'd have money to spend on setting up shop, too, because you'd have enriched them by purchasing up their products. People who have been in the gun sales business could enter the gun production business with the billions of bucks you'd just dropped in their laps. They'd have every reason to do so, knowing that their customers were being starved of a popular item (and having the reasonable expectation that you 'good guy' tech firms were going to try to buy up all of their production line too).
This is the way to turn the gun industry from what the author calls "a financial pipsqueak" into a powerhouse. Gun tech startups would prosper wildly across the fruited plain.
It's a great idea. Go for it.
7 comments:
In the long run, you're right, but his idea of lefty corporations like Microsoft or Apple buying up the major manufacturers and shutting them down could cause quite a bit of disruption in the market. It would probably increase prices as smaller manufacturers would lose some of the economy of scale. You'd also lose some amount of know-how as groups of experts were dispersed to smaller companies.
From the other side's perspective, this isn't a bad strategy, though as you point out, in the long run it could well bite them in the butt.
No Br'er Fox! Don't throw me in that br'er patch!
I have this inkling of a suspicion that Apple is mercenary enough we would just see AR-15s in bright shiny white. Sadly everything would freaking glued together and we would need to basically buy a new rifle every so many years.
Ha!
And we'd constantly have to apply updates. Would it be the XAR-15?
It wouldn't be glued together, they would just put an Apple cpu with a battery attached to it, so that you can't initialize certain functions without recharging it and setting in various decryption/passcodes.
It'll be like a smartphone + AR 15, hybrid.
Which, actually, isn't beyond the technical specifications of today's world. There is even Tesla type induction power charging, which is wireless. All we need are microwave power sats or portable nuclear thorium generators.
There are some pretty interesting apps they could load in.
Post a Comment